This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Battling child sex tourism: what we can learn from other countries

Australia, Britain and the U.S. all monitor travels of known child offenders. Britain even requires them to provide a full travel itinerary.

Mon., March 18, 2013

United States

The National Sex Offender Targeting Center is run by the U.S. marshals, America’s famed fugitive hunters, but they are more likely to use computers than firearms.

The United States Marshals Service deploys about 40 people to track down any of the roughly 700,000 registered sex offenders in America who are on the run or violate reporting requirements.

That includes monitoring convicted offenders travelling abroad, which until recently was not systematically done in the U.S.

For several years, as part of anti-terrorism measures, U.S. border officials have been screening everyone who leaves or enters the country. Names from passports and flight manifests are scanned for anyone on the no-fly list, but as a byproduct authorities also ran the names through the national sex offender registry.

Article Continued Below

Most states require offenders to give at least 21 days notice of foreign travel.

About four years ago, a team headed by U.S. Marshal Rich Kelly began to check on the names of convicted offenders that appeared as departing tourists and check back with their home states to make sure they were complying with the law.

Then the targeting centre created a simple reporting system to forewarn destination countries through Interpol that a convicted American sex offender was heading their way.

Last year his group forwarded more than 540 notifications — double the number from the previous year.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has the strictest regulations of any Western country for travelling sex offenders — and it just got tougher.

Since last August, convicted British sex offenders have to report all foreign trips of any duration.

As well, convicted offenders must also provide a full itinerary. Failure to comply could bring up to five years imprisonment, compared with two years in Canada.

The U.K.’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, a sort of FBI for crimes against children, also posts information on missing sex offenders on its “Most Wanted” website. Since 2006, 75 per cent of the individuals named on the site have been tracked down — many of them abroad.

Australia

Det.-Supt. Todd Hunter of the Australian Federal Police keeps careful track of known sex offenders from his country who travel to the popular child sex tourism destinations such as Thailand and Cambodia.

He can tell you precisely how many of the 14,650 on Australia National Child Offender Register travelled overseas between June 1 and Nov. 30 last year: 457.

Australian police know which countries their convicted offenders are visiting and have enough advance notice and the legal power to stop them if necessary.

Since legislation against child offenders came into force in 2005, the AFP has charged 31 people with 101 sexual contact offences against a child abroad. That is more than six times the number of charges laid in Canada, where the law against child sex tourism has been on the books since 1997.

Australian law requires seven days’ notification for foreign travel by convicted offenders.

The AFP can then notify the destination country, which can then monitor the tourist’s activities or even deny him entry.

The Australian law also allows police to charge someone — not just a convicted offender — with “acts in preparation” of a sex crime abroad.

“If we can prove prior to the person getting on board the plane that they are travelling for the purposes of going to commit sex offences, then we can arrest and charge them here,” said Hunter.

In some cases, the AFP has the power to have a suspected offender’s passport cancelled before he travels.

“We use it quite often,” said Hunter. “We see it as a valid disruption to the person that we suspect may be going to commit harm.”

Such draconian measures appear to have the support even from civil liberties groups.

“That’s a reasonable law, given we owe much greater duty to protect children than to protect adults,” said Bill Rowlings, head of Civil Liberties Australia.

But he cautioned: “A sex offenders’ register can be a very blunt instrument. Balancing the rights of convicted offenders who have served their time is extraordinarily difficult.”

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com